Polar F6 Heart Rate Monitor

The Polar F6 heart rate monitor is an intermediate heart rate monitor. Designed for fitness training and weight management, it has memory to store training data for multiple sessions. The Polar F6 is much better at letting you track and review your personal progress than the more junior models in the Polar fitness series.

Current week summary (Diary). It tells you the sum total of stats for this week: total number of sessions, total duration, total calories burnt, and total time spent in your light, moderate and hard exercise zones. It is saved every Sunday as a weekly file.

It stores the last 12 Weekly Files.

Cumulative stats of sessions since the last reset date: Total number of sessions, total duration, total calories burnt

Basic time keeping: Time, date, alarm

Backlight

Polar UpLink to transfer data from a PC to the heart rate monitor. (Requires a Windows PC with a sound card and loudspeakers or headphones.)

Polar WebLink/SonicLink to transfer data from the heart rate monitor to Polar's fitness trainer website. (Requires a Windows PC with a sound card and a microphone.)

This is a long list of features. Compared to the preceding model in the same series (Polar F4), the Polar F6 heart rate monitor has got much better capabilities to track and analyse the results of your training through the days and the weeks. It gives you a good picture of the progress you have been making.

This takes you to Amazon for some of the best selections for this model. Certain selections come with FREE Super Saver Shipping.

Main differences between Polar F6 and Polar F4

The differences are highlighted in bold in the list above. Here are more details.

OwnZone is an additional fitness-based automatic method of setting your heart rate training zone. You are asked to do a series of short warm up exercises. The watch measures your heart rate resulting from doing these activities. At the end of it you are given your heart rate limits for the current session.

When setting your heart rate limits via either of the two automatic methods, you can choose your exercise intensity depending on your training goal for the session: If you are having an easy session, selecting Light will set the zone to between 60 and 70 % of your maximum heart rate. If you choose to have a hard session, selecting Hard sets it to between 80 and 90 % of your maximum heart rate. Ditto for Moderate (70 to 80 %) and Basic (65 to 85 %).

It can display, out of the calories that you have expended, what percentage of it is due to fat being burned. If very little of your calories burnt are due to fat, and you are trying to lose weight, you should be looking at training at a different intensity.This feature in the Polar F6 heart rate monitor can be quite useful for someone looking to lose weight.

When reviewing excercise sessions, it is now possible to see what the training zone limits were.

It is possible to download data from the Polar F6 heart rate monitor to a Polar web site for further analysis. Note that this is not the same as downloading data to your computer for analysis. Your data is stored, analysed and displayed on the web site, not locally on your PC's hard drive.

The coded analogue transmission now reduces the possibility of cross-talk when other heart rate monitor users are nearby.

Summary

The Polar F6 heart rate monitor is the first monitor in the Polar fitness series to give you the ability to review in detail the past training sessions. The fat percentage of burnt calories feature is very useful for weight manangement. At $119.95, it is $20 higher than the price of Polar F4.

This takes you to Amazon for some of the best selections for this model. Certain selections come with FREE Super Saver Shipping.